Equilibrium
by thunderousapplause
Summary: I never asked to be special. I didn't realize there was a purpose for it. It never occurred to me that I was part of a greater plan, that there were checks and balances that needed to be fulfilled before everything could fall into place. Alternate canon.


**Disclaimer: **_I do not own Smallville, nor do I own anything/anyone affiliated with DC Comics, Alfred Gough, Miles Miller, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, The CW, or Warner Bros. Television. If I did, certain events, pairings, and moments of stupidity would have never taken place. I do, however, own my main character. _

They say that everybody has their secrets-at least, that's what I've heard, anyway. But I wonder: who are the all-knowing "they"? And who made their highly exalted opinions the basis for the way we live and think?

Well, for my purposes, I'm going to go ahead and assume that "they" actually knew what they were talking about. People have secrets. They can deal with them in a variety of ways. Supposedly, writing down your secrets is therapeutic. Well, since my whole life is pretty much a secret, this ought to be especially therapeutic (never mind that I'm probably going to end up dragging this whole thing into my trash folder when I'm finished. But that's totally beside the point.). So, why now? Why now, at the age of 23, when I finally know where my life is going, who I'm meant to spend it with, where my "destiny" (God, I hate that word) lies, am I choosing to relieve the stress of the current situation by typing the words? To be honest, I don't really know. Act of rebellion, maybe? Because I shouldn't? Because I know that even entering this stuff onto a computer screen is risky? Yeah, I should know better; go figure.

So people usually start these things at the beginning. Fine. The beginning it is.

First of all, my name's Jordana. It's a bit of a mouthful, but it's the name Hannah chose for me, at any rate. I suppose when you pick up a kid on the side of the road eight miles outside Metropolis and decide to keep her-even though you're a single social worker and have never had children-you earn the right to name her. That right is even more earned when you see the cute little strawberry blonde, blue eyed girl can put a hole through a solid wall with her bare hands. Not only did Hannah Collins _not _freak out (Well, okay, I'm sure she freaked. But she didn't call the FBI and have the government perform experiments on me or anything.), she decided to keep me. She wanted to…protect me, I guess. I can never be completely sure.

Hannah Collins died a car wreck when I was almost five. I remember a lot of things about her. But there was one thing she told me every day without fail, almost like a ritual of sorts.

"Don't let anybody know how_ special_ you are, Jordana. You promise? They won't understand. They'll be afraid." The miracle is that I somehow understood what she meant. Guess I knew even then that she was serious. She feared the day when it would be discovered that I wasn't normal. Even after she died and I was put in foster care, I didn't tell anyone. I didn't tell them about how, sometimes, when I tried to run down the kids' home's driveway, I ended up five blocks away in the blink of an eye. I didn't mention that I couldn't feel pain, either. No matter how hard I hit something, no matter how sharp the object I touched, I felt nothing. Not heat, not cold; I couldn't feel the discomfort others around me expressed. Except on those sporadic occasions when the debilitating nausea would come over me, usually driving me to my knees. Took me some time to figure out the cause of those instances.

Anyway, back to foster care. I lived with ten families from the time Hannah died to the time I was sixteen, not counting the times I lived at the children's shelter. The longest I ever stayed in one place was two years. The shortest was three weeks. I know what people thought. I was wary of everyone. I was difficult to reach, I refused to open up. Short and simple, I trusted no one. Why? It was safer. I went to several different schools; saw how anyone who was different was treated. They would have done more than bully me on the playground if they'd known just how _different_ I was. I would've gotten the test lab treatment, most likely. So I kept to myself. Even when I killed for the first time at the age of thirteen.

I was living with the Roys at the time. Christine and Ron. They did the best they could, I guess, dealing with three foster kids. Christine always seemed slightly stressed-most likely because Ron seemed to think she should handle caring for us girls. My foster sisters, Bethany and Maggie, were both close to my age and I got along with them fine. Meaning, of course, that I was pleasant but distant. Distant equaled safe, after all. But I digress. I was walking home from school. Maggie and Bethany stayed later than I did most days (extra-curricular activities and all that). At that age, all I wanted was to get home where I could go upstairs, shut the door, and not feel like I was constantly being watched. Paranoid, I know, but paranoia had saved me too many times to be ignored. Anyway, right. I was walking home. A man approached me, gun in hand. I don't know if he just wanted my money or something..._else_. I'll never know, because I tossed him into a brick wall faster than he could blink. It was an instinct. I wasn't trying to smash his skull in and kill him. But that's what happened. After staring in shock for a few seconds, I did what any normal thirteen year old would do: I ran home. Did it a little faster than a normal thirteen year old, though. Obviously. I went into the bathroom and sat in the corner. I didn't cry or have some sort of psychological meltdown. I wasn't even horrified about what I had just done. It had been an accident…I had been defending myself…most people would have done the same if they were capable. Why should I be expected to be better? I was a kid. It wasn't fair to have to deal with these situations. This kind of logic seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, and that scared me. I knew the guy had wanted to hurt me. I hadn't done it on purpose, but I knew I'd do the same thing again if I had to. It was terrifying, looking in the mirror and knowing what I was capable of.

Three weeks later, Ron and Christine requested that I be placed with another family. Said that although I didn't cause problems and that I was a reasonable kid, there was something "off" about me-like my expressions weren't real. As if underneath every smile, I was watching, calculating. I didn't care; they were right. That's what I told myself when Tina, my social worker, came to take me back to the children's center. Funny how the older you get, the more stifling that place seemed. Tina brought me into her office, sat me down. Said we needed to have a talk.

"Jordan, you're a sweet girl. You'd likely be adopted if you dropped that emotional mask of yours. If you tried to be less guarded," she said. I just shrugged. I wasn't trying to be the typical rebellious teenager. It's just that my mind sort of shut down when she started using terms like "emotional mask." That wasn't even accurate. It's not like I walked around with a blank stare. I emoted plenty. I just hid any deep feelings underneath. Okay, yeah, I _may_ had been a little colder than usual since the incident. It was my way of coping. Tina talked for a while about how she knew it was difficult for me to trust people and how that was normal for kids like me._ Right_. Like she knew where _trust_ would most likely get me. I let her drone on while I nodded and fiddled with the object in my pocket-the only clue I had about where I came from. Tina finally gave a too-perky smile, patted my shoulder, and told me not to worry; I'd be placed with a new family soon. She was right. Two weeks later, I was moved into yet another house.

Tina drove me there, murmured, "Please try," to me as she left.

So, I lived with the Talbots next. They had two other foster kids besides me, plus two kids of their own. Todd and Cassie did the best they could. In fact, they were probably the best of all the families I lived with growing up, even if Cassie was a little spacey. Todd was in the shipping business (that'll be important later). Anyway, I started returning to "normal" about that time: smiling, showing emotion again. But no one ever knew what I was really thinking or feeling. Heck, half the time I didn't even know what I was feeling. A flash of sadness, a moment of excitement, being unexpectedly nervous or cheerful for no reason. The weird sensation of having feelings-feelings that weren't mine-had been with me all my life, but as I became a teenager, it got stronger, more frequent. But that seemed a lot less worrying that the fact that new "talents" were popping up left and right. First came the headaches. If they hit at school, I'd go to the bathroom and lock myself in a stall. The splitting migraines were accompanied by the sudden ability to see through solid objects. Eventually, the headaches faded. My new talent stayed.

My first response was, "_Wonderful_. Just _wonderful_. Now I won't have to punch a hole in the wall when I want to look on the other side." But over the days and weeks, I started seeing things differently. Mostly because I was using my "gifts" to help people more frequently. Pushing someone out of the way of a car. Grabbing a purse a guy had stolen out of his hands. I started looking at them as a blessing instead of a curse. I may have been alone, but at least I could make a difference. Of course, that seemed like a small comfort one extremely hot summer day that year. I was in the kitchen helping Cassie out by getting dinner started. And I was sweating. It didn't occur to me right then that I'd never sweat before. And my eyes burned. Bad. I looked over at the table, and then it was on fire. Yeah. On _fire_. . Naturally, I found the fire extinguisher and put it out. Michael would come in right then. Michael, my thirteen year old foster brother, was at that preteen boy stage where spying on people was his favorite hobby. He read his sisters' diaries whenever he got the chance. Listened to their phone calls. Just the sort of kid I didn't want to deal with. Luckily, Cassie bought that I'd set a hot dish directly on the table and it had caught on fire. I know, I was still learning the art of the excuse. But I had mastered the casual tone and the earnest look necessary to make people believe you. Even if the excuses were absurd, I was a fantastic liar. I had to be.

Cassie cocked her head and told me to be more careful. Michael narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Maybe knocking him down the first time he mouthed off to me hadn't been the greatest idea. But the kid irritated me, and my first response when irritated or angry was not to scream or whine, but to take action. _Calmly_. People usually learned that the calmer I was, the more worried they should be. Michael found that out the hard way (I left a bruise. Again, not smart. Even _he_ knew that a girl my size shouldn't have been able to toss him aside that easily.). He'd been keeping an eye on me ever since. But all this junk is really just setting up the events of the summer I was fifteen.

Todd bounced (Yes, bounced. Todd was very energetic when he got an idea.) into the kitchen and announced that we needed to get out of Metropolis for a few days. He said the city heat was stifling him and making us all languid. (Todd liked words like "languid.") Therefore, we would all go on a little vacation.

"Disney World!" That was Macy, Todd and Cassie's eight-year-old.

"Sorry, pumpkin, we can't go that far," Todd replied. "We need to stick a little closer,"

"Then where are we going?" asked Cassie.

"Little town called Smallville. Farming's big there and my company needs me to go finalize a few details about shipping the crops when they're harvested in the fall." Todd went on about how it would be relaxing, about how Cassie could find some little antique shops to look around, how the place was "The Meteor Capital of the World". I'll admit it, I wasn't really paying attention. I was busy mulling over this insanely weird email I'd gotten from some guy who claimed to be a doctor or something. But hey, how was I supposed to

know that a boring trip to Smalltown, U.S.A. was going to turn my life upside down?


End file.
